It took so long after the Grizzlies’ 101-94 loss to the Detroit Pistons for head coach J.B. Bickerstaff to emerge from the locker room and into his post-game presser that you’d be forgiven for thinking the team was once again trying to figure out which Brooks they were trading.

Build and then lose a big early lead? Come up short in what becomes an up-for-grabs game? Do so with Jaren Jackson Jr. mostly on the bench in the fourth quarter? It may have come between Christmas and New Year’s, but Saturday night's 112-103 loss to the Boston Celtics felt more like Groundhog Day for the Grizzlies.

Mike Conley brought the Grizzlies home in Brooklyn to end a three-game losing streak, but it was rookie Jaren Jackson Jr., with a career-high 36 points and a breathtaking fourth-quarter flurry, who kept hope alive.

For most NBA teams, individual game outcomes shouldn’t be surprising, and despite their unexpected appearance atop the Western Conference standings a few days ago, the Grizzlies are one of those teams.

One of the keys to the Grizzlies’ surprising start to the season is that Mike Conley and Marc Gasol have played every game so far. But the Grizzlies got a reminder on Friday afternoon in Los Angeles of what playing without Conley is like, and it wasn’t pretty.

It’s not always so simple, but in the modern NBA the team with the best perimeter scorer and playmaker has a pretty big advantage, and it was advantage Grizzlies as Mike Conley scored 28 points to lead the team to its fourth straight win, 98-88, over the Dallas Mavericks (7-9).

At 10-5, the Grizzlies are in a playoff race again after a two-year absence. But in an unusual double-dip, they may also be in a Rookie of the Year race for the first time in a decade, since O.J. Mayo finished second to Derrick Rose in 2009.

Let posterity note that rookie Jaren Jackson Jr. set a new career scoring high with an alley-oop dunk that doubled as a "Whoomp! There It Is!" request, a FedExForum rite of passage that pushed the Grizzlies lead to a game-high 14 points in the third quarter of an eventual 112-104 win over head coach Dave Joerger, suited-and-booted Zach Randolph, and rest of the oh-so-familiar visiting Sacramento Kings.

Ten games does not a season make, but it’s close enough to draw some preliminary conclusions. The Grizzlies have played four games at home and six on the road. Record-wise, they’ve played two of the league’s three best teams (Warriors, Nuggets) and three games against two of the league’s three worst (Suns, Wizards). What do we think we know so far? Here’s an annual taking of the temperature, now at a new home. Ten takes after ten games.

Winning big is fun, but winning close is better. The building back-and-forth tension is a richer, deeper experience, creating the kind of basketball games that keep you up, sifting through the string of moments lingering in your mind. These games seem longer, in a good way, because all 48 minutes matter.

We’ll find out by Tuesday night whether there’s a “blue wave” in the midterm elections. But on Election Day eve, the Grizzlies ended their three-game West Coast road trip submerged by a familiar Golden wave.

The Grizzlies are hitting the road for a two-game West Coast trip a man short, with forward JaMychal Green likely out more than a month with a broken jaw suffered in the second half of Friday’s home opener.

It’s a first-quarter timeout at the Grizzlies home opener and Grizz, the mascot, comes through the tunnel with something in his hands. It’s an infant in costume, a bear-cub cutie. Grizz carries his cub to midcourt, “Circle of Life” from The Lion King playing. He raises the little one above his head, toward the rafters. The crowd -- appropriately -- roars.

In the first half, Marc Gasol looked a lot like his team: slow of foot and uncertain of mind. Gasol got (a little bit) better in the second half, which was more than you could say for the team as a whole.

When Jaren Jackson Jr. takes the court Wednesday night in Indianapolis, he will become the youngest player to ever suit up for the Grizzlies, in Memphis or Vancouver. Jackson’s debut is perhaps the most intriguing thing about this season’s opener, but how much does a debut typically tell us?

On the cusp of this Memphis Grizzlies season, the franchise’s 18th in Memphis, the prevailing questions have been been about the team: How good can they be? How concerning were their preseason struggles? But let’s take a moment to talk about you.

When former Grizzlies head coach Dave Joerger needed a bucket, he’d yell “Turn Four,” a call for Zach Randolph to get the ball. When we need to mull over the big questions at key moments in the Grizzlies season, we use it to call a Daily Memphian quorum.

Orlando Magic guard D.J. Augustin was cruising toward the basket for a right-handed layup. That’s when from the left corner 6-foot-11 Jaren Jackson Jr. flew to the other side of the rim and blocked Augustin’s shot.

A tale of two Media Day scrums: Jaren Jackson Jr. sat encircled, with microphones, recorders, and TV cameras surrounding Castle Jackson like an impenetrable moat. He held court with a big smile, talking about rap albums and Netflix shows, essaying the locker-room generation gap for which he’s the poster manchild in a manner that tiptoed the line between guileless and knowing.

The Grizzlies made their preseason debut Tuesday night in Birmingham with a 131-115 loss to the Houston Rockets. Scores don’t really matter in the preseason, but here’s a chain of thoughts on things that might:

September 2018

From time to time throughout this season, The Daily Memphian will convene a quartet of our writers, veteran Grizzlies watchers all, to bat around the questions of the moment. We’re calling it Turn Four, in tribute to the play call -- translation: get Z-Bo the bleeping ball -- that Lionel Hollins or Dave Joerger would call out whenever the Grizzlies needed to settle down and get a bucket.